The rowing endeth
Christian Century, Nov 15, 2003 by Anne Sexton
The rowing endeth I'm mooring my rowboat at the dock of the island called God. This dock is made in the shape of a fish and there are many boats moored at many different docks. "It's okay," I say to myself, with blisters that broke and healed and broke and headed--saving themselves over and over. And salt sticking to my face and arms like a glue-skin pocked with grains of tapioca. I empty myself from my wooden boat and onto the flesh of The Island. "On with it!" He says and thus we squat on the rocks by the sea and play--can it be true--a game of poker. He calls me. I win because I hold a royal straight flush. He wins because He holds five aces. A wild card had been announced but I had not beard it being in such a state of awe when He took out the cards and dealt. As he plunks down His five aces and I sit grinning at my royal flush, He starts to laugh, the laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth and into mine, and such laughter that He doubles right over me laughing a Rejoice Chores at our two triumphs. Then I laugh, the fishy dock laughs the sea laughs. The Island laughs. The Absurd laughs. Dearest dealer, I with my royal straight flush, love yon so for your wild card, that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha and lucky love. --Anne Sexton
From The Awful Rowing Toward God. [C] 1975 by Loring Conant Jr., executor of the estate of Anne Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company All rights reserved.
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I VALUE THIS POEM by Anne Sexton because of its sense of totally undeserved, miraculous grace followed by divine hilarity. I identify with the rower who, "with blisters that broke and healed" on her hands, plays a poker hand with God. Like most of us, the rower seems to be both straggling toward God and against God. Holding a royal straight flush, she apparently wins, but then God plunks down an impossible five aces, and trumps her. Lucky for her (and for us), God's been holding a wild card all along (Christ? grace? love? all three?), so God wins. Paradoxically, they both win. And laughter, divine hilarity, rolls from his mouth into hers, "a Rejoice-Chores at our two triumphs." She concludes that the wild card is God's "lucky love"--lucky for all of us.
--Robert Siegel, whose books include In a Pig's Eye and The Beasts & the Elders, is professor emeritus of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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